COMMENTARY

To define a state

For more than 30 years, the Republican Party has risen solidly in the rest of the South only to be rebuffed time and again by Democrats in Arkansas.

Beginning in 1978, what might have been seminal Republican victories in Arkansas have been turned instead, on every occasion, into mere aberrations.

The question that Arkansas voters will answer epically in 2014: Will that happen again? Have the Republicans fully risen? Are Arkansas Democrats fully toast?

Consider:

It was in 1978 when Republican Ed Bethune got elected to Congress from the Second District in Central Arkansas. He served six years. But when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 1984 against David Pryor, and lost, the congressional seat went back to the Democrats, most notably in the persons of, first, Ray Thornton and then the more thoroughly liberal Vic Snyder.

In 1980, Republican Frank White upset Bill Clinton for governor. Two years later, a frenzied and focused Clinton won back the office, and you know the rest.

In 1989, U.S. Rep. Tommy Robinson, representing that Second District, fled the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans. He promptly ran for governor in 1990. He got beaten in the GOP primary by Sheffield Nelson, partly because of an organized Democratic crossover vote. Clinton then beat Nelson.

In 1992, while Clinton was getting elected president, Republican Jay Dickey won the congressional seat in the Fourth District of southern Arkansas, previously thought to be an entrenched conservative Democratic domain. Dickey served until 2000 when a youthful former travel aide for Clinton’s gubernatorial campaigns, a politically energetic and savvy state senator named Mike Ross, took him out.

In 1996 the voters of Arkansas elected a Republican — Tim Hutchinson — to the U.S. Senate. They let him serve but one term, then ousted him for David Pryor’s son, Mark, in 2002.

By 2008 Democrats were back in place everywhere — all state constitutional offices, five of the six congressional seats and with overwhelming one-party dominance in the Legislature. Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe was the most popular politician in the state. Mark Pryor had no opponent for re-election. Hillary Clinton was going to be president, most likely.

Then came Barack Obama. Then came Obamacare. Then came the Tea Party. Then came the Republican insurgence, capturing five of the six congressional seats, three constitutional offices and majority status in both houses of the state Legislature.

But now looms 2014 and the big question: Will Arkansas Democrats stem the tide once again, keeping Mark Pryor in the U.S. Senate and holding on to the governorship, and thus controlling state agencies and patronage?

Democrats again are frenzied and focused. They’re systematically clearing the decks for their most electable agents — Pryor for the Senate and, more importantly, the aforementioned Ross for governor.

Yes, the governorship is more important, at least as defines Arkansas politics.

The U.S. Senate is more cosmically elevated than governor, of course. But a Republican revolution in Arkansas will not be complete until a Republican sits in the governor’s office and works with a Republican legislative majority, making appointments and framing debates and signing conservative legislation and dominating news cycles.

Over coffee a few weeks ago, Ross described urgent pleas from Democrats that he make the race for governor because, otherwise, those Democrats figured they might have seen the last governor of their party in Arkansas for their lifetimes.

Desperate Democrats have anted up a quick $2 million for Ross because he is their last best hope. He is the one man who might beat — might beat — the shop-worn Republican nominee.

That’s retread Asa Hutchinson, who has only lost all three of his statewide races — to Dale Bumpers in 1986, Winston Bryant in 1990 and Mike Beebe in 2006.

Beyond that, Hutchinson was, as a congressman from the Third District in 1999, a lead prosecutor for Republicans in the impeachment trial of the still-favored son of Arkansas Democrats, Bill Clinton.

That is to say Hutchinson might do a more thorough job of galvanizing Democrats negatively than his own party positively.

If Hutchinson becomes governor, Republicanism will have fully washed over Arkansas.

If Ross wins, Democratic levees will have held again.

It’s that simple. It’s that big.

Cotton versus Pryor is not as defining, not as embedding on the state.

Republicans are confident that Arkansas is unstoppably into a powerful reddening cycle that won’t be completed until the 2014 election.

In a way, they are saying the state has so gone Republican that even Asa Hutchinson can win.

They think Mike Ross is a dead man walking because he didn’t vote against Obamacare in committee, though he did vote “no” on the floor.

They think he’s snookered, checkmated, because he can’t possibly explain that yes-then-no voting without sounding like a Washington inside player — which is the second-worst thing, behind an Obamacare supporter, to be in Arkansas right now.

Democrats think we still pick governors as much on personality as policy. Then think Ross has a little more engaging personality than Hutchinson.

Democrats think there are voters out there who support Republicans such as Tim Griffin and Rick Crawford and Steve Womack, and who may even resent Pryor over health care, but who think they kind of like old Mike Ross.

As one observer put it: Ross offers “soft Democrats” the opportunity to cast at least one Democratic vote.

Mark Pryor and Tom Cotton may well determine control of the U.S. Senate and, in turn, the policy direction of the nation.

But Hutchinson and Ross, last seen standing side by side and competitively submerging their faces in watermelon slices at Hope, will define Arkansas, perhaps for a generation.

They both lost the watermelon eating, by the way, to a local politician.

John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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